Mesh Viewer & Shadows for MAC users

Mesh Import Open Beta started on October 13th and I’ve been meaning to try it out. Then today on plurk Mr. Raul Crimson told us that he was able to enable shadows on it without much fuss using his MAC so I knew this would be a great opportunity to let those of you using MACs know. Here is a plurk that I did earlier that has more information about how he enabled the shadows, his system specs and even a picture that he took with his shadows on. You can also see his picture on his flickr. He also made a video on the mesh viewer with his shadows on! Thank you so much Mr. Crimson, I know all my blog readers that are using MACs and were having difficulties enabling shadows will really appreciate all the information you have provided! <3 Please note, the shadows may not work with all ATI graphics cards. Remember to read this plurk carefully for more information.

Many of you may be wondering, “What is Mesh?” Mesh is basically just a new way of bringing items into Second Life that were created in other 3D modeling software, such as Maya or Blender.

This is how you get onto the mesh viewer:

1. Download the mesh viewer from this page. Install the Second Life Project Viewer for Mesh (Aditi).
2. Once you have it downloaded & installed, go to the login screen and press ctrl-alt-g simultaneously and make sure you are logging into Aditi which is the preview grid.
3. Login with your SL username and password.

Once you are in you may notice that your friend list and/or inventory might look like it’s years old depending on how often you visit the preview grid. There is a way to update the preview grid but I’m not sure if that will work in this viewer. You can give it a try if you like.

You can try visiting the different mesh regions to see what people are up to. The pictures you see in this post are all untouched (just cropped) and from this location.

For more information you can view the Mesh wiki page. You can also visit one of my favorite bloggers, Daniel Voyager who has already blogged about it a few times. Finally, you can view and share pictures from the mesh viewer in the Second Life 3D Mesh flickr group.

Happy Meshing! (is that a word?)